This afternoon we headed down to the Seattle area to see a demonstation of HP/Compaq's blade-server line. It was an impressive demonstration. The best part is that the number of servers we're considering putting into this system is ABOVE the break-even point. This stuff requires some infrastructure invesments, and if you have under 6 blades it comes to be more expensive than normal 1U servers would be. The power for these enclosures is 220v three phase, which is some heafty juice. A fulll 42U rack of these should pump out the heat something fierce.

We may get there in the not too distant future, as a number of our current servers are in the 3-5 year range for age. Thus, they need replacing. A lot of them can be replaced with blades, so long as their I/O needs aren't heafty, or can be serviced from the SAN easy enough. The bigger database servers may need their own stuff, but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. These bitty things can't have PCI slots in 'em, so no direct attached backup for these puppies.